South Korean Media Bare Fangs — At Each Other

Korea Economic Daily criticized its rival, Maeil Economic Daily, with a front-page story and several others on Tuesday.

What’s up with the South Korean media? News organizations that normally act like puppies with each other have suddenly turned into ferocious pit bulls.

Two of the biggest newspapers, Chosun Ilbo and Dong-a Ilbo, have turned more confrontational as they scrapped for morsels about who President-elect Park Geun-hye will appoint to top positions in her government.

Early this week, Dong-a took a dig in print at Chosun’s coverage, though without mentioning its competitor by name. Still, the reference was so obvious that other media quickly noticed and began commenting on it.

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The slap was something rarely seen in the heights of South Korea’s media world, which more than leans toward clubby behavior.

South Korean reporters, instead of working in a central office with their editors, cluster with reporters from competing news organizations in “reporter rooms” at the agencies and companies they cover. The result: a tendency toward collaboration that homogenizes the news and, in some cases, produces more regard for sources than for readers and viewers.

That tiff came amid an even more transparent spat between the nation’s two leading business dailies. The catalyst again was Ms. Park’s transition.

After Ms. Park’s nominee for prime minister, Kim Yong-joon, withdrew last week even before the formal confirmation process began, the Korea Economic Daily noted that something similar happened late in the administration of Kim Dae-jung, when a business executive he nominated for prime minister was forced to withdraw amid allegations of tax evasion. That nominee: Jang Dae-whan, chairman of Maeil Economic Daily, the chief rival of Korea Economic Daily.

Maeil subsequently published an article accusing a cable TV channel run by Korea Economic Daily of engaging in stock manipulation with some of its reporting. Several people involved with the TV channel have been indicted for buying stocks, then talking them up on the air and profiting from subsequent price rises. (The Wall Street Journal endured such a scandal with one of its reporters in the 1980s, an event that shaped rules of conduct still in place at the organization today.)

Korea Economic Daily fired back on Tuesday with six stories about malfeasance and bad behavior at various Maeil publications and broadcast entities. The headline at the top of the main story suggested Korea Economic Daily was launching a series about its competitor. But on Wednesday, it said nothing more.

Still, the fractiousness is the talk of South Korea’s media world at the moment. And a question hangs: are some glass houses about to be shattered?